Before YouTube, can you remember how you used to search for videos online? Not many people can. They see YouTube as being the first and most popular video serving website, and it would naturally be the first place you would look, if you were looking for a video of something online. Google genuinely had to acknowledge that YouTube was becoming a superpower on the internet, and in 2006 acquired YouTube to the tune of $1.65billion. With all that said, and with the traction YouTube has now built up, you can safely say that Google, along with the other search engines, gives a lot of credence to video online.

Google is particularly interested in your website if you display multimedia, and even more interested if you have the media rich content that they own. Never more has it been more apparent that including video, images and other media on your website can actually curry favour with the search engines.

Embedding videos is a very simple task, and YouTube encourages it by giving you the opportunity to embed using different sizes and colours on every video they serve. Whatever your niche, you can simply find a video that fits the best, and then embed it on your blog. By adding some notes to the page, that accompany the video, Google sees this as highly relevant, and will strive to send visitors if the rest of your site is just as good. The trick is, do not overdo it. Far too many websites have YouTube videos being blasted to their pages using autoblogging software, and Google knows this.  If you fall into the same trap, then Google will discount this content as being very non-unique, and possibly rank you much lower. Use video as and when you need to, and observe the colour schemes that you have already to integrate the video better. With this in mind, you cannot go wrong.

WordPress themes are generally free. The creators of themes usually ask that their link remain intact at the footer of the screen on every page so that anybody who likes it can click through, and possibly buy premium themes from the theme developers. More often than not, free themes will have exactly the same features as premium themes, so there’s no real need to pay out silly money on something that works just as good for free. The WordPress site itself has many free themes by enthusiastic developers, and every day new themes are added. The main thing to consider is what type of content you are going to be publishing, so it fits in well with the design.

Magazine type sites, like this one, provide an area for featured content, as well as normal content. Also, you will see video categories, linked from the home page. Featured content is ideal for any posts you create that are monetized. You want to channel as much home page traffic to the featured area of your site as possible, so an attention grabbing image with text is required. Magazine style sites work well for media rich content, but if you just have text based information on your site, with the occasional image, then you may want to look into Journal type themes. These provide you with basic post layouts, that have a large header, and good sized post pages. If you want a graphically rich website, then you need to look more into premium themes, because these will have an animated home page, usually, and large linked areas to featured content.

For the most part, magazine type themes are the ideal solution for most bloggers, as you can add and remove functionality depending on your needs. You do not have to have the video section linked from the home page, and you only need to display the content you want.